SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Mine is likely not the typical situation. My wh was exceedingly cruel to me and deceptive our entire more than 3 decade marriage.

I stayed the first time because of what I now believe was terrible advice from a religious standpoint of forgiving and taking responsibility for whatever I did to cause his infidelity. I accepted blame and did not require that he work on himself to be a man deserving of my love, body, loyalty and legacy. I damaged all of this for a man who would discard me when I became sick.

Mind you the first dd I found out about a supposedly long time in the past supposedly one time thing after we now had a young child. Cue hysterical bonding,rug sweeping, more porn use on his part, escalating lies and fast forward to now.

3 years ago I stayed out of terror and abuse. I was very physically sick with Lyme. I had just lost a parent I was the victim of rape by deception. I never consented to an open marriage where he had unprotected sex with strangers who I received a phone call had stds. His circle of friends were part of his hookup lifestyle and/or were willing to blame me and his family told me I was to blame for his infidelity. Marriage counselors told me to just get over it or they didn't know who to believe and that I needed to work on myself and what I was doing to make him unhappy in the marriage. I was much older and (stupid me) I did not protect myself financially from my husband. I had empathy (what some people call "super traits"). I had ptsd/severe betrayal trauma and very misplaced loyalty.

Short answer is..

I failed to see who he really was. I failed to predict what he was really capable of. I slept with the enemy.

I initially chose to stay for the kids. Now it's because I can't financially afford a divorce at this moment.

More power to those that have made their marriage successful after infidelity.

I tried, but failed. My reasons for trying to stay were because I loved her with every part of my heart and soul. She was my best friend. She was the mother of our three beautiful children. She was the center of my life. She made our house a home.

If my STBXWW could stay away from her AP, I would of kept working on myself to move past the infidelity and rebuild our marriage. My identity is (was) the traditional happy family I thought we had. I would have done anything to keep that, including staying with a cheater.

[This message edited by Lifeneverthesame at 10:28 AM, June 25th (Friday)]

IMO, camel, you won't make the best decision for you without resolving a lot of the pain (anger, fear, grief, shame) that I think enabled you to abuse your W.

I don't believe that I would put much confidence in the reliability of reconciliation statistics. I have no idea how reliable data can be collected.

Me, too.

Why, simply because i chose to believe that sooner or later i would either get MY wife back.or she woukd show me that i was better off without her. I looked at things as best i could and trying for reconciliation was in effect kicking the can down the road, giving me time to make the best decision for ME and my kids.

I know i am the type of person that could gave stayed in a half arsed marriage.. Till the kids grew up etc, but i also realised at about 1.5yrs post DDay that i deserved SO much more than that, so i pushed.. Hard.. And we are now working on a better marriage for both of us..

We both know the cheating will always be part of the history now, but hopefully less of a painful memory as better memories are overlaid on top of it.